Nouwen starts with the love of God as a Spirit-given reality. He is thinking of Romans 8:15-16, which says, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God . . ..” Nouwen says, “The Spirit reveals to us not only that God is ‘Abba, Father’ but also that we belong to God as his beloved children. The Spirit thus restores in us the relationship from which all other relationships derive their meaning.”
All other relationships derive their meaning from our relationship with God who is our Abba. And Abba is a name for God that indicates closeness. The translation “Daddy” gets at our way of expressing closeness to our human fathers. I also like “Papa,” since I called my grandfather Papa, and he was my closest father figure when I was a child and a teenager. Thinking of God as Daddy or Papa helps us to think of God as embracing and nurturing care, without the “connotation of authority, power, and control that the word Father often evokes.” God’s love includes and goes way beyond “all the love that comes to us from our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and spouses.” Paul in Romans says our ability to call out to God as our Abba comes from the Spirit as a gift.
None of us would be here today if someone had not cared for us when we were infants. We cannot live without the love of our parents, sisters, brothers, spouses, and friends. Without love we die. This was clearly seen, Greg Baer points out when after WWI many infants orphaned in Europe we given good nutrition and medical care, but warehoused in big institutions. Infants were in crib after crib with no one to hold them except for feeding when some busy nurse found time. Three fourths of those babies died. Why? Because without love we die.
“For many people this love comes in a very broken and limited way. It can be tainted by power plays, jealousy, resentment, vindictiveness, and even abuse. No human love is the perfect love our hearts desire, and sometimes human love is so imperfect that we can hardly recognize it as love.”
How do we ever learn to open ourselves to Real Love, God’s Love when we have been wounded by those who love us with imperfect human love? We have to act on faith and trust that the Source of Real Love is God’s unlimited, unconditional, perfect love. We must trust that this love is not far away from us and is the gift of God’s Spirit both dwelling in us and available to us through many human channels.
No comments:
Post a Comment